Neit/Neto: A Celtic Vishnu?

Neit/Neto: A Celtic Vishnu?

Is there a Celtic god who we can say resembles Vishnu in a meaningful way? Though we search through the most prominent Celtic deities, we find parallels to other Vedic gods, but, thus far, nothing believable pointing to Vishnu.

However, one god, not one of the most well-known, a god named only in a handful of sparse fragments, offers a suggestive possibility, and so we can offer this speculation. Macrobius mentions a god of the Iberian Celts named Mars Neto/Neton (elsewhere also spelled Neithi) who wears a radiant crown like the sun, and according to him this is because the passion or fervor to act with valor is a kind of solar heat. 

In Accitana, too, the Spanish nation, an image of Mars ornamented with beams is most religiously celebrated, they call it Neton  […] the fervor with which the mind becomes incensed and arouses to anger and at other times to virtue, and sometimes to the excess of temporary fury, through which things also arise in wars, they named Mars [...]

In short, it is to be pronounced that the effect of the sun, from which the heat of the soul, from which the heat of the blood is aroused, is called Mars. (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 19)

Thus, this solar “heat of the soul” or radiant passion that enables the warrior’s valorous action is a key element of Mars Neto, even if we known little else about him. Now Vishnu specifically aids Indra in battle with his tejas, sometimes embodied in a banner (compare the solar beams that ornament Neton), as we see below, and this word tejas means “radiant heat” or “spirit.” A line of the Mahabharata addressed to Indra reads: “O lord. Resorting to the foam of the waters that was strengthened by the splendor of Viṣṇu, thou hast slain Vṛtra of yore” (Mahabharata 5.16). Thus Vishnu, a war god, aids the other primary war god specifically with a kind of radiant heat or solar splendor.

Vishnu’s solar aspect has long been obvious to interpreters (see Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, 38-39), but he is also an extremely important war god. This war aspect of his is often forgotten or under-emphasized, even though early recognized avatars of Vishnu were frequently known as conquering warriors, such as the heroic warrior-king Vasudeva, depicted with a battle mace, Krishna, who urges Arjuna, Indra’s incarnation, to war, giving him the spirit to fight as Vishnu does for Indra himself, and Narasimha, the fierce part-lion avatar who violently destroys evil. We see in the quotations below from Roger Woodard that Vishnu is not only a war god, but that he is one of the most important Vedic war gods, and, furthermore, that being a warrior and aiding other war deities with his radiant spirit are two of his most central functions.

The banner of Indra is described in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā of Varāhamihira 43 and the Bhaviṣya Purāṇa (summarized in Gonda 1993: 255–259; Kramrisch 1947). Fearing the demons, the gods took counsel with Brahmā, who instructed them to obtain from Viṣṇu a banner which would protect them from the demons (VarāhBS 43.1–2). The banner that Viṣṇu provided was created from his own radiant energy (tejas), shining like the sun. With the raising of this banner, decorated with garlands, bells, and other small objects, Indra defeated the enemy (VarāhBS 43.5–6). 

The king recites verses to the Indradhvaja, calling it ‘unborn, imperishable, eternal, of unchanging form’; addressing it as ‘Viṣṇu, the wild boar’ as well as ‘Indra’ (Gonda 1993: 256). Invoking Agni and Indra, destroyer of the monster Vṛtra, the king prays that his warriors will achieve victory (VarāhBS 43.52–55). (Woodard, 76)

Like the linga of Śiva—and the Irish stone of Fál—the Vedic yūpa is also possessed by a warrior deity. The yūpa belongs to Viṣṇu, affiliated with the warrior element of divine society, and is also associated with Indra (compare its alloform, the Indradhvaja, ‘Indra’s banner’). (Woodard, 95)

The Maruts are a band of warrior deities, sons of Rudra (later Śiva), who are especially closely linked to Indra as comrades-in-arms, but are at times also associated with Viṣṇu, and also with Parjanya, god of rain and thundering storm, or Trita Āptya, another warrior deity affiliated with and showing similarities to Indra. (Woodard, 169)

Viṣṇu (see especially §§2.6.1; 2.6.3; 2.7), the three-stepping god who is companion to Indra, assisting him in the fight against the dragon (§§4.9.2.4; 4.9.2.8.1) and at times affiliated with Indra’s warrior band, the Maruts (§4.8.2). (Woodard, 259)

[…] when Viṣṇu is celebrated by himself, Indra is the only other god who is given a place; when about to perform his supreme feat of slaying Vṛtra, Indra implores Viṣṇu to step out more widely. (Woodard, 259)

Viṣṇu, in taking his three steps, transcends and conquers the spaces of the universe (see Gonda 1993: 55 with references). (Woodard, 260)

Indra is at times drawn into Viṣṇu’s conquering advance, creating space for humankind. In the Soma ceremony hymn of Rig Veda 6.69, for example, Indra and Viṣṇu (denoted by the dvandva Indrāviṣṇū) are invoked to come to the Soma feast on their ‘enemy-conquering horses’ (stanza 4); are urged to lead the sacrificers forward on paths free from obstructions (stanza 1); are praised for stepping broadly and thereby increasing the space of the air and making broad the regions of space for humankind (stanza 5). The hymn ends (stanza 8) by addressing the two warrior deities as conquering but unconquered, as having brought about limitless threefold space when they had fought. (Woodard, 260)

Viṣṇu, is the god who conquers and creates space. (Woodard, 260)

Thus the “space” that Vishnu is often associated with can more specifically be the living space conquered through war. This conquering of space was enacted via Vishnu’s role in the sacrifice as lord of sacred space:

The questing journey of the sacrificer and priests into the great sacred space of the Mahāvedi, the staking out of that space with altars and huts, and the continued progress toward the column that stands on its distal, eastern border (a boundary which is not) constitute an odyssey in which gods of war play a fundamental role. Most notable in the event is Viṣṇu, the god who transcends, conquers, and expands space. Indra, most renowned of the warrior gods, accompanies him. (Woodard, 261)

Lastly, Woodard directly analogizes Vishnu and Indra to Mars, the deity with whom Neto is syncretized in Macrobius. 

Homologous to the conspicuous presence of the warrior gods Indra and Viṣṇu in the space of the Mahāvedi is the presence of Mars in the space of the Ager Romanus. To phrase the matter somewhat differently: whatever it is that Indra and Viṣṇu are doing within the Mahāvedi, Mars is doing the same within the Ager Romanus. The procession of Vedic priests through the Mahāvedi and the ambarvalic movement of Roman priests through the Ager Romanus are both descended from a common ancestral rite of the questing journey from the small sacred space into the great. The journey is an invasion; the gods of war must be invoked to take the lead, to vanquish the opponent, to secure possession of the invaded space. As warrior Indra and, especially, Viṣṇu, the god who enlarges space, are bound to the Vedic yūpa, the marker of the unboundary, source and means of blessing, so Mars is linked to the Roman terminus (deified as Terminus). He is present and invoked around the distal rim of the Ager Romanus, at those terminal points of ritual salience. (Woodard, 262)

Looking to Ireland we have Neit/Net, a dangerous war god who may be the Irish variant of Neto, and whose name means “fighting” or “passion” (perhaps a solar passion similar to the tejas), and this Neit is one generation above even the Dagda. He is the Dagda’s uncle, Nuada and Dian Cecht’s grandfather, and Lugh’s great-great-grandfather on both sides. This positions Neit as potentially more primordial, closer to the Source or Origin, than any of the better-known chiefs of the gods. The only names of note that are further back than Neit’s in the genealogy are his mysterious father, Indui, “king of the north country, lord of horse breeding peoples,” and Fintan (seemingly a primordial Rudraic manifestation). Vishnu is called an “ancient” ritual expert or ordainer in RV 1.156.2, and “the ancient one who is by birth the embryo of truth” in verse 3 of the same hymn. Verse 5 of this hymn says he “enlivened the Arya,” which ties back to his role as solar enlivener.

Another of Vishnu’s most important qualities is that he is identified with the sacrifice. He is said to be the sacrifice, for example in Śatapatha Brahmana 3.6.4.1–2, 9. He is also asked to give heat or fervor to the sacrifice in Atharvaveda 5.26.7. One of the few things we know about Irish Neit is that when Aed is killed by Corrgend, Aed is buried either in a fort called Ailech Neit, Neit’s Stonehouse, given to the Dagda by Neit, or in Ailech Imchell, described as “in the precinct where dwelt Neit and Nemain [his wife]” (Dindshenchas, Ailech I-II). Both of the attested gravesites of Aed are directly and solely connected with Neit and his wife. If we recall that Aed’s “grave” would actually be a site of the first fire shrine, considering that he is Fire directly comparable to the fire stolen and brought to earth by Prometheus/Matarisvan, and thus that his grave-shrine would be a potential location of sacrifice, we can see that Neit’s “Stonehouse” could very well be a primordial sacred enclosure used for sacrifice and fire worship. Vishnu, on the other hand, is identified with the sacrifice itself and also is the lord of the sacred space of the sacrifice, both enlarging it and setting its boundary (which can also be an unboundary), as Woodard notes above. If we consider Neit to be, like Vishnu, the lord of the sacred space of sacrifice, this could explain the involvement of Neit, a supposedly narrow War God, in the burial of Aed in his Stonehouse in particular and in no one else’s. We may never know who Neto and Neit are with certainty, but if the Celts had a variant of the god Vishnu he would have had to look something like this God of War, Solar Passion, and Sacred Space.

*********